Remembering Our Dead

Paula Greenall

Paula died after being hit by a vehicle. An inquest returned an open verdict.

They called her a freak, said she was "Tr***y Paula", and would shout abuse at her in the street. Vicious words which her mother cannot bear to repeat.

Graffiti were daubed on the walls of her flat and the windows were smashed. She was beaten up and had two bald patches at the back of her head where her hair wouldn't grow back after she was attacked, once with an iron bar and once with a beer bottle.

The abuse began a decade earlier, when her mother kept having to wash her school blazer after other teenagers spat at her and called her names. She suffered concussion and had her nose broken.

Paula Greenall died four months ago under the wheels of a car, after she had endured many years of verbal and physical abuse from other young people. A coroner recorded an open verdict last week - her mother, Carole, had hoped it would be accidental death.

Paula became a target because, 24 years ago, she was [assigned male at birth]. She lived in the small village of Wheelton, near Chorley, Lancashire: Carole, 47, blames people's small-minded attitudes for Paula's death.

Paul Greenall had realised he wanted to be a girl when he was 14 years old. "I always thought she was quite an unusual child," says Carole. "She was intelligent and hyperactive. She never stopped talking and was inquisitive." Carole began to realise something was amiss when her child was at high school. "She grew her hair and she looked a lot more feminine. She would pull her jeans in to show off her waist. I wondered if she was gay, but we didn't really talk about it."

Their GP referred Paul to a psychiatrist in Chorley. "After an hour with [deadname] he said he thought she was transsexual and he referred us to a specialist in London who deals with gender problems."

Paula was taken out of school and had two years of home tuition. She dressed in unisex clothes and went to a psychiatrist in London every three months. But she became frustrated as she had to wait two years for female hormones and was given a lower dose than she wanted. She was also having injections to suppress production of testosterone.

"It was humiliating when we were out and people were shouting abuse at her," says Carole. "If I was with her she would feel embarrassed for me and would try and hurry us on. I don't know how she put up with it for 10 years."

At 17 Paula moved to Brighton, where she had a boyfriend for two years. Her mother believes this was the happiest time of her life. But during this time, she began taking heroin. Paula moved back to the village when she was 19, into a housing association flat in Clayton Brook. "As soon as she moved into the flat, people started to spray graffiti and her windows were broken. She was becoming more dependent on drugs. Her front windows were smashed and were left boarded up for three months before they were replaced.

"The police were worried, but nobody could help. She had to go on the bus into Chorley every day to pick up her methadone prescription and she would get beaten up and end up in casualty."

She is annoyed that Paula was ridiculed for a problem which was caused by a birth defect. "A psychiatrist explained to me that all foetuses start as female and then there are changes in the brain which make it male. Other people with children with birth defects get sympathy - but all we got was abuse."

She says Paula didn't just want to be a woman, she wanted to be a perfect woman. "She was very critical of herself and her hips were never quite shapely enough." When she was 22, Paula had breast implants - which she was delighted with - and she finally had [reassignment surgery] in October 2002, 11 months before her death. "She was so pleased with the way she looked after the operation," says her mother. "It seems so terrible that she went through so much physical and mental pain in her life to meet such a terrible end."

On the day of her death Paula went to a pub with a friend and an argument developed after they had been drinking. They turned up at her mother's house, but she wouldn't let them in as they were in such a state.

"She was very upset and she ran off saying, 'I am going to kill myself.' But she had said that so many times before. Then I had the phone call from the hospital saying Paula's been hit by a car.

"One of my daughters said that some of the teenagers had said to her, 'We didn't mean what we said.' But she just said, 'It is too late.'"

https://web.archive.org/web/20230215085506/https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/jan/12/gender.world

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/5882940.mothers-tribute-to-tragic-paula/

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmpublic/criminal/memos/ucm39302.htm

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/5861721.no-right-treat-people-way/

Report added: 21 Jul 2024

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